It would be Cuomo’s second major transportation appointment this week, with the governor yesterday naming top economic adviser Patrick Foye to head the Port Authority.

With the PA board’s expected approval, Foye will replace Christopher Ward as executive director at the end of the month, at an annual salary of $289,750 — a 5 percent reduction from the position’s current $305,000.

Ward, credited with accelerating the rebuilding of Ground Zero but attacked by the Cuomo administration for millions of dollars in “unnecessary spending” in the process, will stay on until the end of the year as an adviser to the authority.

Foye was downstate chair of the Empire State Development Corp. under former Gov. Eliot Spitzer and is now Cuomo’s deputy secretary of economic development.

Sources called Lhota, former Mayor Rudy Giuliani’s budget director and deputy mayor, the “odds on favorite” to replace Jay Walder as MTA chair.

Cuomo said he will request that the PA take over the operations of the Lower Manhattan Development Corp.

Additional reporting by Fredric U. Dicker in Albany and David Seifman in NY